


Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Read My Lips [32]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 13:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6377185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: Any, Any, Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces (Seether).</p><p>Evan Lorne, on annual leave, runs into an old acquaintance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces

“Your work is beautiful.”

Evan looked up and smiled. “Thank you.”

The boy who stood beside his booth was maybe nineteen, wearing jeans and an old olive military surplus jacket. He had his hands tucked into his pockets and his head tilted back, studying Evan’s work intently. “Really great use of color. I especially like this one.” He nodded at the painting of Atlantis’s central tower.

“My mother worked hard to teach me. I try to do her proud,” Evan said.

“She should be proud,” the boy said. He eyed Evan’s other sketches, most of them of alien planets and places in Pegasus and interiors of Atlantis, or of his fellow expedition members. None of them contained any identifying marks, had anything that could be traced back to an NDA violation. To the untrained eye, they looked like various scenes from a fantasy world Evan had invented. “You do tattoos, too?”

“I can,” Evan said, “but my sister’s the pro tattoo artist in the family. This is her booth. I’m just sharing her space while I’m on leave, earning some spare cash doing caricatures and quick portraits.” Atlantis Expedition members got two weeks of leave a year (five, if you counted the three spent on the Daedalus for transport), and Weir had been careful to make sure her CSO wasn’t on leave at the same time as her deputy CSO, and if Rodney was on leave, then of course John was on leave, and the only time it would make sense for Evan to take leave was at the same time as John. So here he was, in San Francisco, avoiding looking at the endless water and wishing he was hanging out with his niece and nephew but otherwise enjoying the sun and the familiarity. That Natalia had let him crash her booth on the pier and make a little bit of extra cash with his art was incredibly generous of her.

“Leave?” The boy raised his eyebrows, looked Evan over. “Apart from the haircut, you don’t look particularly military.” The boy had bright, dark eyes, neat short hair - military short, if one looked at him the right way - and there was something familiar to his cheekbones and the lines of his nose.

Evan was never one to forget a face, but the boy he was imagining was a few years younger, was -

“Sir,” Evan said, starting to rise.

The boy shook his head. “No, Major. Not anymore.”

Evan hesitated and, at the boy’s imperious nod, resumed his seat. “You - I thought you were in high school. In Colorado Springs.”

“Done and graduated early,” the boy said, and Evan didn’t dare let himself think the boy’s name. “Out on my own. Doing the adult thing. You know, job or college or - something.”

“Not sure what to do with your life yet?” Evan asked. “Never thought of - joining up and going out there?”

“Out there? To Atlantis? Always kinda regretted I never got to see it,” the boy said. “Surprised you ended up there, that they let Doc Shep through the gate.”

“If you never got to see it, how did you that’s what was in my paintings?” Evan asked.

“Never got to go there in person, but I couldn’t stay out of the loop. Couldn’t live my life not knowing what’s going on in the big wide world.” The boy shrugged. “How long you on leave?”

“We only get two weeks, so...ten more days,” Evan said.

“Two weeks?”

“A year. Kind of a long commute.” Evan smiled wryly.

“It’s a horror show out there, isn’t it?” The boy stepped closer, lowered his voice. “The Wraith, the - everything.”

Evan shrugged. “You saw more of that than I did, sir.”

“I never saw anything like this in the spaces between, though.” The boy gestured at Evan’s drawings. “The beauty of it all. Mostly I saw...trees. And near-death. And more death. And still, trees.”

The sarcasm was so familiar, even half an octave too high.

Evan said, “Are you doing all right? On your own? Are you staying with anybody?”

The boy stepped back, shook his head. “No. I got nobody. The old guy - he got to keep it. And me - I’m in a pretty strange in-between space myself. Too old for anyone who looks like me. And too young for anyone who might have liked who I’ve been.”

“Sir -”

“Jonathan. My name is Jonathan.”

“Jonathan,” Evan said gently, “if you ever need anything, if you can stand living on a hippie commune, my Nana makes great pasta, with sun-dried tomatoes. And my mom’s a real patient lady, if she could teach hyperactive little me to paint. And my sister - she’s always looking for a good pair of hands at the shop. If - if you ever get lonely.”

Jonathan ducked his chin, studied Evan with hooded eyes. “I can’t pretend to be something I’m not.”

“I grew up on a hippie commune. They don’t ask questions. They just accept.”

“How did you make it from a hippie commune to…” Jonathan nodded at the painting of Atlantis.

“There’s a black sheep in every family.” Evan shrugged. He picked up one of his sister’s business cards, wrote his mother’s phone number on the back, and slid it across the table.

Jonathan accepted it, tucked it into one of his jacket pockets. “You were always a good man,” he said. “And just as good a soldier.”

“Thanks, Jonathan.” Evan was going to say more, but then he was hit in the kidney by a wrecking ball. Or his six-year-old niece, Gabby, who’d sneaked in from the back to say hello. By the time Evan had recovered from his truly embarrassing spill off the stool and righted himself and answered Gabby’s giggles and Mikey’s light-hearted teasing, Jonathan was gone.

But when Evan got back to Atlantis and fired up his email, there was a message from his mother with a tiny postcript that read: _Jonathan says hello._


End file.
